Anomalistic psychology is the scientific study of extraordinary experiences and beliefs often labelled paranormal — including reported hauntings, alien abduction claims, near-death and out-of-body experiences, and belief in psychic ability — seeking explanations in terms of known or knowable psychological and physical factors, without assuming anything genuinely paranormal is involved.
Distinction from parapsychology
Anomalistic psychology is often confused with parapsychology, but the two start from opposite premises. Parapsychology investigates whether paranormal phenomena — Telepathy, Precognition, Clairvoyance — might genuinely exist, generally using experimental methods adapted for that purpose. Anomalistic psychology instead asks why people report and believe in such experiences at all, and looks for the answer entirely within conventional, already-understood psychology: cognitive biases, memory distortion, sleep physiology, and social and personality factors. A widely cited framing of this distinction, from James Alcock's 1981 book Parapsychology: Science or Magic?, helped establish anomalistic psychology as a rigorous field in its own right, separate from parapsychology's assumption that something anomalous might be real.
History
While individual psychologists had studied paranormal belief for decades, anomalistic psychology consolidated as a distinct academic field from the 1980s and 1990s onward, driven substantially by researchers including Susan Blackmore, Robert Morris, and Richard Wiseman in the UK. Psychologist Chris French founded the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2000, which remains one of the field's leading dedicated research centres. French and co-author Anna Stone's 2014 textbook, Anomalistic Psychology: Exploring Paranormal Belief and Experience, is a standard academic reference for the field.
Areas of study
Anomalistic psychology covers the same broad territory as claimed paranormal experience generally, but reframes each area around a proposed conventional explanation:
- Hauntings and apparitions — explored through factors such as suggestion, infrasound, and pattern misperception, an approach closely mirrored by Ciarán O'Keeffe's own academic research
- Alien abduction and hypnotic past-life regression — studied as a source of insight into false memory formation
- Psychic readings and mediumship — examined through cold reading and related techniques, rather than assuming genuine communication with the dead
- Psychic healing and alternative medicine — studied for what they reveal about placebo effects and the power of suggestion
- Out-of-body and near-death experiences — linked to factors including suggestibility and disruption of the body's vestibular (balance) system
Reported rates of ostensibly paranormal experience are notably high in the general population — estimates suggest that between roughly a third and half of people report at least one such experience during their lifetime — which anomalistic psychologists treat as itself a significant and legitimate subject for study, regardless of the phenomena's ultimate cause.
Relevance to The Vault
Several figures already documented here work within, or draw on, anomalistic psychology specifically — most notably Ciarán O'Keeffe, whose research into the environmental correlates of reported hauntings follows the same conventional-explanation approach as the field generally, in contrast to parapsychology's investigation of whether the phenomena themselves are genuine.